He was walking slowly up Ludgate Hill, his hands in his pockets, his brow knit, altogether in a disconsolate manner, some vague intention in his mind of taking a peep inside Doctors' Commons, when, by the merest accident, he happened to turn his eyes on the string of vehicles passing up and down. In that same moment a cab, extricating itself from the long line, whirled past him in the direction of Fleet Street; and its occupant was Flood the lawyer. All his listlessness was gone. Chattaway threw himself into the midst of the traffic, and tore after the cab. Sober pedestrians thought he had gone mad: but bent on their own business, had only time for a wondering glance. Chattaway bore on his way, and succeeded in keeping the cab in view. It soon stopped at an hotel, and by the time the lawyer had alighted, a portmanteau in hand, and was paying the driver, Chattaway was up with him, breathless, excited, grasping his arm as one demented. "What on earth's the matter?" exclaimed Mr. Flood, in astonishment. "You here, Chattaway? Do you want me?" "I followed you to town by the next train a week ago; I have been looking for you ever since," gasped Chattaway, unable to regain his breath between racing and excitement. "Where have you been hiding yourself? Your agents have been expecting you all this time." "I dare say they have. I wrote to say I should be with them in a day or two. I thought I should be, then." "But where have you been?" "Over in France. A client wrote to me from Paris----" "France!" interrupted Mr. Chattaway in his anger, feeling the announcement as a special and personal grievance. What right had his legal adviser to be cooling his heels in France, when he was searching for him in London? "I meant to return without delay," continued Mr. Flood; "but when I reached my client, I found the affair on which he wanted me was complicated, and I had to wait the dilatoriness of French lawyers." "You have been lingering over the seductions of Paris; nothing else," growled Chattaway. The lawyer laughed pleasantly. "No, on my honour. I did go about to some of the sights whilst waiting for my business; but they did not detain me by one unnecessary hour. What is it that you want with me?" They entered the hotel, and Chattaway took him into a private room, unwashed and unrefreshed as the traveller was, and laid the case before him: the sudden appearance of the mysterious stranger at Barbrook, his open avowal that he had come to depose Chattaway from the Hold in favour of Rupert Trevlyn. "But who is he?" inquired Mr. Flood. "A lawyer," was the reply--for you must remember that Chattaway could only speak in accordance with the supposed facts; facts that had been exaggerated to him. "I know nothing more about the man, except that he avows he has come to Barbrook to deprive me of my property, and take up the cause of Rupert Trevlyn. But he can't do it, you know, Flood. The Hold is mine, and must remain mine."